person Peter Twal, two poems

Peter Twal is the author of Our Earliest Tattoos, winner of the 2018 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Believer, Best New Poets, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.

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It’s the Memory of Our Betters

On the moon, a blue jay, unsure where it last left its nest
prays to Saint Anthony while on earth someone incorrectly
adjusts a thermostat & a museum of natural history explodes— creating

more natural history Lost in awe in a light bulb

exhibit, reading every last placard, the sun explodes as well, a pimple
from a Hubble away & yet: The torch has been passed down, the sun sighs, smothered
beneath the rubble Death comes to us full-

bellied but always craving & the next time architects resurrect the museum,
precautions are taken to protect the art: Patrons please don’t

bleed on the paintings & I force myself to enjoy

this cappuccino in the frozen atrium nothing like the natural
light my body stomachs, a funnel

stretched down my throat in a vacuum like the blue jay
back on the moon, eventually bluer than it was born to be

*first published in The Journal

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We Set Controls for the Heart

Death in a pair of skinny jodhpurs sulks off screen Tickles my ears with its riding crop The skeletal
closeness of a memory framed through bony fingers when I become this

body of refugees Between whose cushions
will you one day find my body A copper piece, face
erased, a long-lost limb holding a red cup bouquet & impossible

to love anymore Hello, this is my heart
Remember when I controlled even the birds fed them from the growth

on your shadow A carpet stained with moldy emotions where you shoulder me to the front,
soldier me to my knees, solder some scrap metal over my frame How useless a Mars Rover
metaphor seems right now So why don’t you save me for later Let the birds

watch, wing in wing A love note
clicks on loud underfoot, a vest of cassette players taped to my chest with a laugh track of people
crying & Death shouts Action shouts Action shouts Action